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Religious OppressionMaurianne Adams and Khyati Y. Joshi*Almost daily, we read or hear news about religious conlict and violence, globally as well as locally, including the murder of three Muslim students in North Carolina, the vandalism against two Hindu temples in Seattle and Virginia, and violence against Jews and Muslims in the U.S. and Europe. Attacks in the U.S. against non-Christian faith traditions lead us to ask these questions: How does U.S. religious difference impact who we are as a nation? Why do some Americans believe that Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs pose a threat to the American way of life? Why are atheists and agnostics considered immoral or unpatriotic? Is this sense of threat a recent response to religious diversity or do these issues reach back into a long historical debate about U.S. national and religious identity, and about the mean-ing of our Constitutional “separation of church and state”?Christianity was integral to U.S. national identity well before the colonial period and it remains important today. The signiicance of Christianity in U.S. life and the challenges it poses for minority religions is a social justice issue that requires the kind of historical knowledge and structural/cultural analysis we use to understand other forms of oppression that stand in the way of social justice.In this chapter, we explore the role of religion in U.S. cultural, social, and political life. We consider how religion in the U.S. has served the needs of a dominant religious, ethnic, racialized majority by ensuring their access to institutional and cultural power. We explore the contradictions within U.S. traditions of religious freedom. We examine the historical legacies that survive in current manifestations of Christian hegemony, and their intersec-tions with other forms of oppression in the U.S. We then raise some of the key concerns for religious pluralism as a form of social justice going into the future. The chapter concludes with a design for teaching about Christian hegemony and religious oppression with some discussion of pedagogical and facilitation issues. Materials and activities that support the design can be found on the website for this chapter.DEFINITIONS OF KEY CONCEPTSReligious oppression in the U.S. refers to the systematic subordination of minority religious groups, such as Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Native American spiritualities, and those who are atheists, agnostics, or freethinkers. The subordination of non-Christian religions occurs at all levels of society through the actions of individuals (religious preju-dice), institutional policies and practices (religious discrimination), and cultural and soci-etal norms and values associated with Christianity (Joshi, 2006).The social structures, federal and local policies, and cultural practices that maintain and reproduce Christian norms in the U.S. through “the everyday practices of a well-intentioned liberal society” result in Christian hegemony (Young, 1990, p. 268). Hegemony generally refers to a society’s unacknowledged and/or unconscious adherence to a dominant world view, without any need for external policing, through assumed cultural norms, policies, | ADAMS AND JOSHI256and practices whose maintenance depends not on any special effort but on “business as usual.” Christian hegemony refers to the dominance of Christian observances, holy days, and places of worship without regard for those of non-Christians (Kivel, 2013, pp. 2–36). In the U.S., Christian hegemony refers to normalized Christian norms that are accepted as intrinsic to our national identity, even as a test of patriotism.Christian privilege refers to the social advantages held by Christians in the U.S. who experience social and cultural advantages relative to non-Christians. Having privilege with respect to normative Christianity means participation in “the assumptions underlying insti-tutional rules and the collective consequences of following those rules” (Young, 1990, p. 41). Christian privilege is generally unacknowledged by those who hold it, because it is maintained through the pervasive but largely invisible culture of normative religious prac-tices (Blumenfeld, 2006; Joshi, 2006; Schlosser, 2003).Whereas Christian privilege refers mainly to those who receive advantage, Christian normativity refers to the norms, traditions, and belief systems that characterize this advan-tage. Examples of the norms, traditions, and assumptions behind law and policy that ben-eit Christians but marginalize, harm, or disadvantage non-Christians, will be discussed later in this chapter.OUR APPROACHOur social justice approach examines religious oppression as one of the many ways that people are categorized in the larger society, resulting in advantage or disadvantage. A social justice approach to religious oppression emphasizes structural and systemic patterns of inequality based upon religious group memberships, reproduced through interlocking social institutions and culture.This approach to religious oppression draws upon sociological, legal, and historical lenses. We analyze U.S. history and current manifestations of religious oppression to show the formative role of mainstream Protestant Christian culture in deining U.S. national identity and patriotism. We use a sociological analysis to describe pervasive religious val-ues, beliefs, and institutions within U.S. culture, institutional policies, and social systems (Fox, 2000; Johnstone, 2004) rather than focusing on what speciic religious beliefs might “mean” to individual believers or examining different rituals and theologies. We explore Constitutional protections of religion in light of the mixed history of legal interpretations. Our historical and sociological analyses lead us to explore the historical and current-day manifestations of religious privilege and religious oppression at the individual, institu-tional, and cultural/societal levels, in order to understand how these manifestations of Christian hegemony have historically reinforced and reproduced each other, and persist in the present day.We also use an intersectional approach and focus on the interactions of religion with race, sexuality, ethnicity, national origin, and other categories of social difference that also have justiied ongoing inequality. To these, we add the concept of racialization or racial formation (Omi & Winant, 2014), a term used to convey the processes by which north-ern European ethnicities (British, German, or Scandinavian) became “racialized” as white with access to white privilege, as distinct from the racial marginalization of the peoples of Asian, African, and Arab ethnicities. In this chapter, the racialization of U.S. religions applies to adherents of minority religions whose religious identities are considered in the U.S. to be race-based, while the white identity of U.S. European Christian or non-Christian Americans goes unnoticed racially. For example, many Americans believe that all Arabs RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |257are Muslim (although some are Christian or Jewish), that all Muslims are Arab (although many are Persian or Indonesian), that all Indians are Hindu (some are Muslim or Chris-tian), and so on. By this process of dual religious and racial stigmatization, the racialization of religion reinforces the religious devaluation experienced doubly as religious and racial marginalization (Goldschmidt & McAlister, 2004).HISTORICAL LEGACIES OF PROTESTANT HEGEMONY AND RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION IN THE U.S.The focus for this chapter is religious oppression in the U.S. However, we highlight two global historical legacies that have been instrumental in the development and perpetu-ation of U.S. religious oppression. We will irst discuss these two global legacies before turning to historical themes within the U.S. The irst global historical legacy grows out of religious conlict rooted in the Old World of European Christianity, namely Protestant hostility and distrust toward Catholics and vice versa, and of all Christians toward Jews and Muslims. The second historical legacy involves the long-term negative consequences of both Orientalism and colonialism. Both of these global historical legacies have contrib-uted to U.S. hegemonic Protestantism and to the oppression toward religiously “othered” peoples.RELIGIOUS CONFLICT ROOTED IN EUROPEAN CHRISTIANITYIn Europe, Christianity emerged out of a small Messianic 1st century sect of Jews in Pal-estine to become the dominant European religious and political force by the end of the Roman Empire. European Christianity marked Jews and Muslims as enemies of the one true faith, asserting that Jews had rejected the deity of Jesus and were responsible for his Cruciixion, and that Muslims followed a false prophet. Anti-Judaism (later termed anti-semitism) and antagonism toward Islam (now framed as Islamophobia) were therefore intrinsic to the core beliefs and self-deinition of a militant European Christian culture that over many centuries shaped national identities for the Roman Catholic and Protestant nation states of Europe (Fredrickson, 2002; O’Shea, 2006; Reston, 2009). The term antisemitism is a 19th century scientiic-sounding euphemism for Judenhass (Jew-hatred) and relects the European racializing of “semitic,” which was a linguistic category that included Arabic and Aramaic as well as Hebrew. The term antisemitism is now used to convey the cumulative force of global and historic religious, economic, and racial oppression of Jews as a religion, an ethnicity, a race, and a people (Cohn-Sherbok, 2002).Islamophobia is a term that uses “phobia” to convey dread, suspicion, and aversion toward “Islam,” the religious group against whom those feelings are directed. The term emerged in part from early 20th-century French colonialism (Bravo López, 2011). Although Christian/Muslim religious conlict dates back into centuries of territorial military conlict between Christian and Muslim nation-states, the term Islamophobia is a relatively recent term that conveys Western prejudice, discrimination, and devaluation of peoples identiied as Muslim. In this chapter we emphasize the stereotypical, prejudicial, and racist ingredients of Islamophobia (Frost, 2008; Rana, 2007) and see it as a complex brew of anti-Muslim religious animosity and distrust, combined with anti-African, Asian, and Arab racism.In a single word, Islamophobia essentializes the diversity of Islamic nationalities, lan-guages, religious sectarian afiliations, ethnicities, and cultures into a single undifferentiated | ADAMS AND JOSHI258and racialized religious group (Rana, 2007). Like antisemitism, Islamophobia conveys reli-gious as well as racist fears and hostility, in this case largely against peoples of North African and Arab and Asian countries who are living in or migrating to Europe and North America. Also like antisemitism, Islamophobia is deeply rooted in Christian religious (and colonialist) assumptions of the superiority of the West over the East; this is described by Edward Said as “Orientalism” (1998) and by others as racism directed against Asians and Arabs, most speciically Muslims, through the racialization of religion (Joshi, 2006, 2009). Rana (2007) captures these complexities by describing how “[the] Muslim is constructed through a racial logic that crosses the cultural categories of nation, religion, ethnicity, and sexuality” (p. 148).The religious cohesion of early Christian Europe was fueled in part by Papal-sanctioned military and religious Crusades against Muslims from 1095 to 1291, and legal restrictions or expulsion of Jews from the 4th to the 16th centuries (Fredrickson, 2002; Gilbert, 2003; Hilberg, 2003). Roman Catholicism was hegemonic throughout Europe until 17th cen-tury Protestantism challenged its dominance in what became a violent and brutal conlict between competing forms of Christianity, which affected the entirety of Europe and other continents colonized by Catholics or Protestants.Antisemitism preached from both Catholic and Protestant pulpits blamed the Jews for the Cruciixion, accused them of poisoning wells, and demonized and dehumanized them as the anti-Christ. In Europe, it was widely believed that Jews murdered Christian boys (the “blood libel”), desecrated the Holy Sacrament, and caused bubonic plague (the “Black Death”). The hysteria about “blood libel” followed Jews to the New World, with docu-mented accusations in upper New York State in the mid-20th century (Laqueur, 2006; Romero Castello & Macías Kapón, 1994; Weinberg, 1986).In early Christian Europe, Jews were stigmatized for loaning money at interest, a prac-tice (“usury”) that was forbidden by Christian doctrine but was needed to fund Christian ventures, such as the Crusades, or to bankroll local authorities. The negative association of Jews with money comes from Christian attitudes toward “usury,” and as Christian Europe developed a capitalist inancial system based on the (now secularized) practice of usury, led to the scapegoating of Jews for the economic recessions built into European capitalism. Even more dangerous was the unquestioning acceptance of the belief that Jews were plot-ting global economic control, as capitalism became a global force. This view, propagated by the ictional Protocols of the Elders of Zion written by Russian anti-Semites, was trum-peted as historical truth in the European and U.S. press, and republished and distributed by Henry Ford in The Dearborn Independent in the 1920s (Bronner, 2000; Laqueur, 2006; Perry & Schweitzer, 2008).Jews within Christian Europe were viliied on religious grounds as Christ-killers, and on economic grounds as money-lenders, tax-collectors, and landlords. They were also ostracized on racial grounds as an impure, “mongrel” people. This view of Jewish “racial impurity” grew out of the Jewish diaspora, as Jews looked like the people they settled among and had phenotypical differences that relected 19th century “racial typologies”— Ashkenazy Jews (in Europe), Sephardic Jews (in Spain and the Americas), and Mizrachi Jews (in the Middle East and South Asia) (Fredrickson, 2002; Laqueur, 2006). Nonethe-less, “the Jew” was stereotyped with dark hair, swarthy skin, and a big nose, features that had become racialized as “Semitic.”Jews were driven out of Christian communities and blamed for denying Jesus as the Mes-siah. They also were proselytized and at times absorbed into Christian society if they agreed to renounce Judaism. They were segregated in ghettos to prevent mixing the inferior racial group (“Semites”) with the superior Aryan stock; they were expelled or murdered if they refused conversion, and tortured if suspected of maintaining secret Jewish observance. By RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |259the 18th and 19th centuries, these religious differences were becoming racialized based on the emerging pseudo-science of racial superiority that classiied Aryans (whites) as supe-rior peoples, and Jews (along with Africans, Arabs, and Asians) as inferior and impure (Laqueur, 2006; Perry & Schweitzer, 2008; Wistrich, 1991). Nineteenth-century eugenics movements in Europe as well as the U.S. were vigorously antisemitic (Michael, 2005). It is the recurrent “essentialism” of Jewish “differentness” that links the religious and economic antisemitism of the Middle Ages to the antisemitic racism behind the Holocaust of the 20th century.The year 1492 is celebrated for European exploration and the discovery of the Ameri-cas. It is also the year in which Jews were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, speciically those who did not hold “certiicates of birth” to document their genealogical blood purity as Christian (Fredrickson, 2002). The requirement for documented “blood purity” as a test of religious and national identity in 15th century Spain suggests an early instance of the intersection of racial, genealogical, and religious identities that later came to characterize race-based antisemitism and other forms of racism (Fredrickson, 2002).While antisemitism was taking root within Europe, the Crusades drove the Muslim “inidel” from the Holy Lands of Palestine and from Christian Spain into North Africa (O’Shea, 2006; Reston, 2009). In Spain, there had been a brief period of coexistence among Christians, Jews, and Muslims, until Christianity was forcibly established as an expression of national identity, and Muslim armies were driven out of Spain into North Africa.It is important to note that Christian antagonism toward Islam was economic as well as religious, a function of intense competition for territory surrounding the periphery of Europe—in Spain, in Palestine, and in North Africa. But the relationships between Mus-lims and Jews, forged as trading partners across Europe, Asia, and Arabia, enabled Jews to live in Muslim countries across North Africa, central Asia, and the eastern Mediterranean for 1400 years as a subordinated, although legally protected, religious minority—not with-out violence, but also not with the unremitting patterns of forced conversion, expulsions, and genocide that characterized European antisemitism (Gilbert, 2003; Weinberg, 1986).COLONIALISM AND ORIENTALISMThe colonial expansion of Europe by the 16th century came on the heels of the persecution of European Jewry and the Crusades waged against Muslims, positioning both as inferior to Christians. One long-term consequence of the situation in Europe was that Muslims and Jews were explicitly excluded from political roles in the English colonies, including colo-nial America. Indeed, the tactics and ideology that drove the expulsion of Jews from parts of Europe and the recurrent wars against Muslims at its fringes were precursors to the tac-tics Europeans later took against the indigenous peoples of the Americas (Winant, 2001).The European powers’ race to colonize Africa, Asia, and the Americas globalized the military and political basis for Christian hegemony and the marginalization and exclusion of non-Christians. This colonial legacy offers valuable insight into the racialization of reli-gion in the United States as well.Orientalism refers to the idea that European ways were superior to the cultures, people, and religions associated with Middle East, African, and Asian nations. “Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, West, “us”) and the strange (the Orient, the East, “them”)” (Said, 1978, p. 43). European encounters with the Orient (Africa, Arabia, Islam, India, Southeast Asia) were understood in Europe to be encounters with peoples inferior to and potentially antagonistic to European civilization (Said, 1978). Orientalism was combined with the | ADAMS AND JOSHI260developing pseudoscience of scientiic racism—that is, the 18th and 19th century use of the term “race” to designate a genetic, intrinsic, and essentialized hierarchy based on bogus “racial” differences—to justify the European seizures and imperial management of South Asian civilizations, together with seizures of land, appropriation of mines, and enslavement of peoples from Africa, Arabia, Asia, and the Americas (Kapila, 2007).Whereas for European travelers and adventurers, Orientalism was the term for race, color, civilization, and language linked to a supposed South Asian (“Orientalist”) philoso-phy and world view, by the 1820s race intersected with religion as its co-accomplice (Kap-ila, 2007). Beliefs, ideologies, and theologies that were not Christian were distorted and essentalized. For example, religions that were not “revealed” in the way that Christianity was thought to be revealed—Hinduism, for example—were considered morally question-able. Other religions—Islam, for example—were considered morally questionable because the source of revelation was not Christian. As a colonizing legacy, Orientalism against peoples from “the Orient” (Arabia, Asia) intersected with U.S. racism (initially against indigenous peoples and enslaved African blacks), as well as a deeply rooted belief in Chris-tian divine purpose. These beliefs and practices were used to justify the distrust and hatred expressed by generations of white U.S. Christians against those who were not white or Christian, and who, for those reasons, were considered incapable of the self-government required to become U.S. citizens.Spanish, Portuguese, and English explorers on their voyages of discovery carried with them an ideology of Christian religious superiority which, also conceptualized as “blood-based,” could be conlated with and mutually reinforce racial domination (Fredrick-son, 2002; Smedley, 1999). Racism, Orientalism, and Christian entitlement reinforced the emerging racial hierarchies and provided a self-serving European colonial history—a history in which “the West” constructed “the East” as well as the South as different and inferior, and whose people would beneit from Western intervention and religious “rescue” (Rana, 2011).The colonial mindset drew on multiple justiications—cultural, racist, religious—to rationalize the superiority of a Western civilization based on Christian faith over native and African indigenous religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or Judaism. Thus, the colo-nial/orientalist encounters resulted in produced distortions, stereotypes, and patterns of misrepresentation about the multiple “others.” Orientalism contributed to Christian hege-mony and normativity by providing a way of looking at peoples, cultures, and religions as collectively superior (Christians) or inferior (all others). These religious/cultural attitudes fed into the arguments against naturalization of Asian and Arab immigrants, discussed later in this chapter.European colonialism became a worldwide enterprise involving the taking of lands, minerals, and peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Arabian subcontinent as well as the Americas. Colonialism was justiied by the presumed racial and religious superiority of the conquer-ing peoples, a religious rationalization for their military conquest and economic exploi-tation. Because colonialism “in God’s name” often went hand-in-hand with Catholic or Protestant missions to so-called heathen peoples, colonial exploitation could be explained away by the assumption that uncivilized, heathen peoples would beneit by the imposition of the presumed gifts of a superior white Christian culture and the “good news” of the one true gospel (Rana, 2011; Shohat, 2006).Racism and religious oppression became mutually reinforcing, virtually indistinguish-able tools of colonialism in the Americas as well as in Africa and Asia, where indigenous peoples of the Americas and Africa were classiied both as heathen and as racially inferior. As European explorers and adventurers encountered different “others,” race irst rein-forced, but ultimate gradually replaced religion as a way to distinguish among people, although in many contexts race and religion remained interchangeable. RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |261Policies predicated on the inherent superiority of western Christianity impacted geograph-ically dispersed areas at the same points in history. For example, the persecution, marginal-ization, and disenfranchisement of Jews in Europe (Middle Ages through 1940s) and Native peoples in the Americas (15th century into the 20th century) were concurrent, although geographically distinct. Although it is dificult to hold the two in mind as parallel processes of Christian oppression, both can be summarized by the historian Raul Hilberg’s vivid summary of the long history of antisemitism (see Hilberg, 3 vols., 2003): “Since the fourth century after Christ there have been three anti-Jewish policies: conversion, expulsion, and annihilation” (Hilberg, 1961, p. 3). Hilberg understood that this was in itself a cyclical, historical trend:The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect: You have no right to live among us as Jews. The secular ruler who followed had proclaimed: You have no right to live among us. The German Nazis at last decreed: You have no right to live.(Hilberg, 1961, pp. 3–4)The ethnic cleansing justiied by Christian antisemitism in Europe parallels an ethnic cleansing that justiied Christian massacres and relocations of Native peoples in the U.S. Both happened in the same historical timeframes, and both were rationalized by Christian entitlement. The deadly sequence from forced conversion, to expulsion and relocation, to genocide and extermination, is the same for Native peoples in the U.S. as for Jews in Europe: “You can’t live among us as Indians” (forced conversions), “You can’t live among us” (relocations), and “You can’t live” (massacre).United States anti-Muslim stereotypes are similarly rooted in Christian exceptionalism that assumed Christian capacity for democratic self-government but denied such capac-ity to Muslims (Feldman, 1996; Murray, 2008). Colonizing settlers had anti-Muslim as well as antisemitic stereotypes in their baggage from the Old World. Stereotypes against Muslims included the view that Muslims were intrinsically violent, that Sharia law was bar-baric, and that Muslim loyalties undermined their capacity for democratic self-regulation or loyalty to a Christian nation—a view expressed in John Locke’s highly inluential 1689 “Treatise Concerning Toleration” that the “Mahometan . . . acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the Mufti . . . who himself is entirely obedient to the Ottoman Emperor” (quoted in Murray, 2008, p. 91). These views justiied the denial of citizen-ship to Muslims in the 1920s. They have also motivated the current-day desecration of mosques, the burning of the Qur’an by self-righteous Evangelicals, and the attacks on U.S. citizens who appear to be Muslim by virtue of head-coverings, beards, or dark skin (Alva-rez & Don, 2011; Haiz & Raghunathan, 2014; Mamdani, 2004; Rana, 2011).RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION AND CHRISTIAN HEGEMONY IN U.S. HISTORYPROTESTANT HEGEMONY IN THE U.S.The dominance of Protestantism in U.S. history relects the English victory in the struggle between empires in which Protestant (English) and Catholic (Spanish and French) armies wrestled for control of the colonies. The English colonies established along the Eastern seaboard were Protestant, although they belonged to different sects and denominations.Although U.S. history generally portrays the colonies as religious havens for peoples persecuted elsewhere, we now know that most early U.S. religious communities were themselves theocratic and exclusive, with their own church establishments that persecuted | ADAMS AND JOSHI262members of other faiths as well as dissenters viewed as “heretics” (Ahlstrom, 2004; Fraser, 1999). The legal foundation for the U.S., the world’s irst secular government, was based upon “an uneasy alliance between Enlightenment rationalists and evangelical Christians” (Jacoby, 2004, p. 31). The Salem witch trials in colonial Massachusetts offer an especially vicious example of religious cleansing, during which citizens accused of heresy and pre-sumed Satanism were hanged, burned, or drowned, using religious justiications for accu-sations based on neighborhood feuds, class antagonism, and misogyny, and presided over by church-empowered magistrates (Adams, 2008; Boyer & Nissenbaum, 1972; Butler, Wacker, & Balmer, 2003).United States history has numerous examples of religious persecution in the name of Protestant sectarianism: Against Quakers in Plymouth Colony, against Catholics and Jew-ish immigrants in the late 19th century, and against Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses (Ahlstrom, 2004; Butler, Wacker, & Balmer, 2003; Wills, 2005). Missions to native peo-ples were federally supported by land grants to strengthen their role in “civilizing” and preparing the way for forced relocation, although these land grants and funds violated Constitutional prohibitions against political support for religious institutions (Echo-Hawk, 2010; Philbrick, 2004). Distrust of non-Protestants (including non-believers) showed up in state law: Massachusetts required that Catholics in public ofice renounce papal author-ity, and Pennsylvania allowed Jews but not atheists to hold ofice. Protestant domination lay behind the 19th century creation of a nationwide network of Protestant “common [public] schools” to maintain Protestant cultural homogeneity in the face of substantial Catholic and Jewish immigration (Fraser, 1999). For Protestants born in the U.S., these other faith traditions seemed incompatible with U.S. citizenship because of their presumed dual or split loyalties: Catholics to the Pope in Rome, Muslims to their Imams or an Islamic Caliphate, and Jews to Israel.The religious freedom of the early U.S. Republic meant freedom for Protestants, which included Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterians, French Huguenots, Baptists, and Moravian churches as well as Quakers, Amish, and Mennonites. The small Shearith Israel congregation (Sephardic Jews from Spain) was tolerated. The narrowly prescribed 18th century ecumenical toleration also left room for the free-thought and Enlightenment rationalism associated with the educated elite, and with their prized traditions of political freedom and free individual conscience—core U.S. values associated with this Protestant consensus.Thomas Jefferson, a prominent Deist and freethinker, proposed a bill “Establishing Reli-gious Freedom” (1779, passed in 1786) that granted complete legal equality “for citizens of all religions, and of no religion” in Virginia (Jacoby, 2004, p. 18). This bill became the prototype for the religious protection clauses added as a 1st Amendment to the new U.S. federal Constitution. The text of the Constitution itself was explicit about religion only in its assertion that no religious test be required for holding public ofice, a clear break from English precedent (Jacoby, 2004).RACIALIZATION OF RELIGIONEnglish, French, and Spanish colonizers became “white” in the same cultural and ideo-logical process through which colonizers understood Native peoples to be racialized as “red,” or African peoples as “black,” although explicit and legalized racial segregation and inequality took a century or more to formalize (Lipsitz, 2006; Roediger, 1991). Thus, the foundational Protestant communities along the eastern seaboard were understood to be white communities, and their relocations of Native American Indians as well as their enslavement of Africans were justiied by their presumed religious as well as racial superi-ority (Harvey, 2003; Loewen, 1995; Wills, 2005). RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |263For native peoples whose ancestry predated white colonizing settlers, for African peoples brought involuntarily into the U.S., and for immigrants from Arab and Asian countries, the religious traditions of their ancestral communities established a foundational role in “mak-ing and preserving those very social boundaries that we call ‘races’ and ethnicities’ ” (Pren-tiss, 2003, p. 1). For the dominant Protestant federal and state power structures in the U.S., the presumed religious and racial inferiority of indigenous peoples became intersecting and mutually supportive justiications for their massacre throughout the Americas, and for expulsion from their ancestral lands and forcible removal of their children to vocational schools in preparation for menial work (Ballantine & Ballantine, 2001; Chavers, 2009; Grinde, 2004). Also, with the immigration of Arabs and Asians, religion and race became conlated and interchangeable markers of the religious and racial “Other.”United States Protestant churches were racially segregated, not only in the sociologi-cal sense of who worshiped with whom, but theologically, culturally, and politically as well (Jacobson & Wadsworth, 2012). Mainstream white Protestant congregations split over religious and ethical questions posed by slavery and racial segregation. Protestant denominations, both North and South, developed biblical interpretations and theological arguments that either rationalized or excoriated race-based bondage and segregation. Bit-ter denominational and sectarian disputes within white churches stimulated the growth of a separate Black Church. Black churches provided refuge, community, solidarity, and support for ex-slaves and black sharecroppers, and fostered black political leadership, economic development, and education. Black churches were centers for organized pro-test during the 19th and 20th centuries, including and beyond the civil rights movement (Fulop & Raboteau, 1997; Lincoln & Mamiya, 1990; Morris, 1986). Chinese, Korean, and Latino/a Evangelical and Catholic religious communities have also provided similar cultural/ethnic/linguistic solidarity (Carnes & Yang, 2004; Chen & Jeung, 2012 ; Espinosa, 2014; Garces-Foley & Jeung, 2013; Min & Kim, 2001).The conlation of religious with racial difference justiied slavery, even in cases in which slaves had become Christians (that is, black Christians); it was also evident in the anti-semitic policies and practices in private schools, colleges, and professional preparation, clubs, hotels, and employment (Diner, 2004; Takaki, 1991). The strength of Catholicism and its conlation with “Mexican” as a racial category helped to justify the 19th century appropriation of Spanish and Mexican lands into the new states of the “anglo” southwest and California (Menchaca, 2001; Takaki, 2008). The racialization of religion provided the basis for vehement U.S.-born white Protestant opposition to immigrants, such as the Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus; Irish, Italian, and Polish Catholics; and Eastern European Jews. The very notion of citizenship itself was racially and religiously charged (Eck, 2001; Jacobson, 1998).RELIGION, RACE, AND IMMIGRATIONPrior to the Civil War, an estimated half of the U.S. population and 85% of Protestants were evangelical (Emerson & Smith, 2000), forging a white, Protestant evangelical national identity. This white and Protestant national identity remained largely unques-tioned until the period from 1840 to the 1920s, when signiicant increases in immigration of non-Protestant peoples poked holes in a previously homogeneous, racialized, mainly Protestant American sense of nationhood. Total immigration rose from 143,000 dur-ing the 1820s, when most immigrants were northern Europeans, to 8,800,000 during the irst decade of the 20th century, when most immigrants were from south or eastern Europe, or Arab and Asian countries (Ofice of Immigration Statistics, 2006). In 1860, the foreign-born American population was over 4 million, with more than 1.5 million from Catholic Ireland (Jacobson, 1998). | ADAMS AND JOSHI264The Irish potato blight of 1844 devastated an already starving Irish and Catholic popu-lation, 90% of whose arable land had been enclosed for cattle by English (Protestant) landlords, leaving the rural poor to subsist mainly on backyard plots of potatoes. With the loss of their subsistence crop, a million Irish starved to death between 1845–1855, while English landlords converted even more Irish lands for grain and cattle export to British markets (Takaki, 1991). One-and-a-half million unskilled and pauperized Irish laborers led starvation to migrate to U.S. east coast and Midwestern cities. Italian Catholics and Jews led European revolution, poverty, and pogroms, settling mainly but not exclusively in urban centers. Wherever they settled, Irish, Italian, Polish, and Latino Catholics estab-lished separate parishes where they could worship in their languages of origin.By 1920, more than a third of the total population of 105 million Americans included immigrants and their children (36 million), the majority of them Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Jewish, with signiicant numbers of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs from China and India (Daniels, 2002). Asian immigration (irst Filipino and Chinese, fol-lowed by Japanese and South Asian) and Middle Eastern immigration (initially Syrian or Lebanese Maronite Christian) brought Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh beliefs and practices, as well as Orthodox religious adherence, to the U.S. (Bald, 2013; GhaneaBassiri, 2010; Haddad, 2002; Jensen, 1988; Takaki, 1998).There was often violent backlash against Irish, German, Italian, and Polish Catholics (Guglielmo, 2003; Ignatiev, 1995), who were perceived to challenge the white Anglo Saxon Protestant way of life. At the turn of the 20th century, intense anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, and opposition to Asians and Arabs, generically painted as “not like us,” were enforced through intimidation by white nativist groups, who feared their brand of Protestant Americanism was under assault by foreign religions and ethnicities. This nativist activism resulted in the Immigration Act of 1917, which speciically eliminated Asian immigration—and thereby immigrant adherents of Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, or Sikhism. This act was followed by the 1924 National Origins Act, which set the percentage for immigrants to the U.S. at a mere 2% of the total of any nation’s residents as reported in the 1890 census. This law closed off southern and eastern European immigration, Jews, and Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics. These targeted and restrictive laws were part of a widespread xenophobia character-ized at its extreme by the Ku Klux Klan and other Christian Identity groups, whose anti-Catholicism and antisemitism enlarged their earlier anti-black racist origins (Dan-iels, 2002; Lee, 2004).Because of the immigration restrictions in place after 1924, Jewish Holocaust refugees were refused immigration status during the 1930s and 1940s, despite strenuous rescue efforts (Wyman, 2007). During the period 1924–1965, most assimilated and Americanized Jews and Catholics—whose ancestors had immigrated before 1924—became white or at least “almost” if “not always quite” white. At the same time, religious observance became increasingly private, with worship taking place in separate parochial, home schooling, or weekend Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish religious education (so-called “Sunday school”).In the decades following World War II, educational, residential, and professional bar-riers to upward mobility were slowly dismantled for white ethnic communities. The ben-eiciaries were mainly white Ashkenazy Jews and white Catholics (Italians and Irish), but not black or brown Catholics or Protestants (African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos/as and Mexican Americans, and South or Central Americans) (Brodkin, 1998; Guglielmo & Salerno, 2003; Ignatiev, 1995; Roediger, 1991). European immigrants who had been seen as “ethnic” (as well as Catholic or Jewish) assimilated by giving up the languages and accents of their home communities, cooking and dressing “American,” surgically altering telltale markers by having a “nose job,” and in the aftermath of World RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |265War II, moving to the “integrated” (interreligious, but not interracial) suburbs. All that remained of their communities of origin was their religion, but that was kept on the week-end “other” side of the “public face” of weekday life.Not until 1965 did a new Immigration Act reopen the door to immigration that was religiously non-Christian and racially non-white, establishing a renewal of the earlier reli-gious, racial, and ethnic national demographic. By 2010, immigrant and second-generation Americans numbered nearly 72 million, more than 40 million of them immigrants, many of them migrating as family units within strong religious community networks (Grieco, Trevelyan, Larsen, Acosta, Gambino, de la Cruz, Gryn, & Walters, 2012). A major out-come of the 1965 Immigration Act has been the growing number of Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh religious, cultural, and ethnic communities in the U.S. as well as major increases in Asian, African, and Latino/a Christian communities (Chen & Jeung, 2012; Ecklund & Park, 2005; Haddad, 2011; Joshi, 2006; Kurien, 2014; Min, 2010).NATURALIZATION AND CITIZENSHIPReligion played a role in who could enter the U.S., and it was also a factor that intersected with race for courts hearing appeals and making decisions about naturalization and citizen-ship for immigrants once they were here (Haney-López, 1996). The Naturalization Law of 1790 had restricted citizenship to “free white men,” thereby excluding all women, blacks (until passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868), Native American Indians, and anyone else of non-white racial ancestry. Citizenship was not fully available to Native Americans until the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act, which extended citizenship to native peoples living on reservations, thus providing them with legal standing and the ability to ile claims for reli-gious protection. These citizenship dates account for the relatively recent Native American litigation for religious protection of their sacred sites and their 1st Amendment rights to the free exercise of their traditional religious practices (Adams, 2012).Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Indian, Japanese, Mexican, Syrian, and Turkish immigrants turned to the courts for naturalization, using a range of arguments to buttress their claims for naturalization as white peoples, but with contradictory results that often involved the intersection of religious and racial identities. These applicants were considered racially ambiguous: Not black, but also not white, and marked by the perception that their reli-gious cultures were unassimilable and “fundamentally at odds” with the American way of life (Ngai, 2004).In cases involving Syrians, the intersection of religious identity (Muslim) and skin color became determinative, as in the 1909 case of the light-skinned Costa Najour, who was granted citizenship by a court that identiied Syrians as members of the “white race” but also registered their concern that this “subject of the Muslim Ottoman Sultan, was inca-pable of understanding American Institutions and government” (Gualtieri, 2001, pp. 34, 37). By contrast, in 1942, the dark-skinned Yemeni Arab Ahmed Hassan was denied citi-zenship on the religious grounds that “a wide gulf separates [Mohammedan] culture from that of the predominantly Christian peoples of Europe” (Gualtieri, 2001, p. 81). Further, even Syrian Christian naturalization applicants who were deemed white and granted citi-zenship, faced discrimination, harassment, and violence from the Ku Klux Klan (Gualtieri, 2001).Two pivotal Supreme Court decisions, Takao Ozawa v. U.S. and U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind, illustrate the crazy-quilt conlations of religion and race in Supreme Court nat-uralization cases. Takao Ozawa was a Japanese-born but California-educated and English-speaking church member who had lived in the U.S. for 20 years when he applied in 1914 for naturalization. To the courts, Ozawa was not “white” because the court accepted | ADAMS AND JOSHI266the pseudo-scientiic classiication of Japanese as “mongoloid” (Haney- López, 1996). Fol-lowing this racial logic, Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh, petitioned for citizenship as a white man, arguing that South Asian Indians were classiied racially as Aryans/Caucasians and therefore white. The Supreme Court reversed its logic from the Ozawa case, argu-ing that while Singh might be classiied as white, “the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences” between “the blond Scandinavian and the brown Hindu” despite their shared Caucasian ancestry. Further, the Court argued that “Hindus could not be assimilated into a ‘civilization of white men,’ ” confusing Sikh with Hindu identity based on Thind’s Indian roots (quoted in Snow, 2004, p. 268). The twisted and contradictory logics of Supreme Court naturalization litigation tied religious to race-based rationales against citizenship in order to have it both ways, but toward the same end point: Racialized religious minorities were not eligible for U.S. citizenship.DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WHITE RELIGIOUS MINORITY GROUPSThe racial exclusion of Christian communities of color from white churches took place in tandem with the religious exclusion also of minority white religious sects from U.S. politi-cal life. For example, the violence directed against U.S.-born Christians who broke from denominational Protestantism to form the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), the Seventh-day Adventists, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, was triggered by out-rage over their overt rejection of establishment Protestantism, and also by their repudiation of federal, state, or local political authority (Butler, Wacker, & Balmer, 2003; Mazur & McCarthy, 2001; Prentiss, 2003). The clashes of police and armed mobs against Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses resulted in the withdrawal of these religious sects into relatively autonomous geographical spaces, or relinquishment of their sectarian claims to political autonomy (Mazur, 1999).Although Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists have been at times considered denominations within Christianity, their theological claims, political separatism, and aspirations toward autonomy alienated them from sectarian Protestant Christianity. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists experienced vio-lence in the 19th century that was harshly similar to the colonial expulsions and execu-tions of so-called heretics who threatened the earlier established religious/political status quo. The antagonism toward Mormons broke into the political and Constitutional arena when Congress prohibited polygamy in 1862, and the Supreme Court rejected Mormon claims to maintain multiple marriages under the free exercise case of the 1st Amendment (U.S. v. Reynolds, 1879). In this precedent-setting case, Reynolds, who was the defendant, argued that the anti-polygamy statute violated his free religious exercise as a Mormon. The Supreme Court reasoned that polygamy constituted an “action” not a “belief,” and not only was not constitutionally protected, but should be restricted for the good of society (Feldman, 1996).The Reynolds case is important because the Supreme Court narrowly deined “free exer-cise” to protect belief but not action, most notably when such actions seemed so far outside Christian norms as to pose a danger to Christian society. But from the Reynolds case on, one cannot ind a clear, bright line between “belief” and “action” in keeping with the meaning of the Constitutionally guaranteed free “exercise” of religion. The line zigs and zags according to the faith traditions of petitioners for “free exercise” of their religion in relation to the Supreme Court’s willingness to accept their claims that these practices were required by sincerely held religious beliefs. Two issues have been at stake here: (1) whether the religious practices oppose the public good, and (2) whether the religious practices are accepted as authentic by the Court. RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |267DISCRIMINATION AGAINST AGNOSTICS AND ATHEISTSChristian distrust of freethinkers, agnostics, and atheists became hardened once the evangelizing fervor of 19th century revivalist Protestantism overwhelmed the rationalist freethought traditions of an earlier period. Many of the framers of the Constitution, like Jefferson, had been freethinkers and Deists. The founding documents of the early Repub-lic relect their secular views. Until 1914, there was a vigorous freethought movement in the U.S. that linked secular beliefs to an “absolute separation of church and state, which translated into opposition to any tax support of religious institutions—especially parochial schools” (Green, 2012; Jacoby, 2004, p. 153).These traditions of freethought and secularism, as well as atheism and agnosticism, came into collision with powerful religious organizations that emerged among immigrant Catho-lics as well as U.S.-born evangelical Protestants. Religious opposition to secularism and atheism became political, as the perceived threat of “foreign” socialism, anarchism, and radicalism among immigrant-identiied activists gained visibility by the mid- to late-19th century. Irish union organizers, Italian radicals, and Jewish socialists were targeted by poli-ticians and the media as serious dangers to U.S. business and commerce, threatening to drive a knife into the heart of U.S. capitalism. Immigrant European socialists were opposed on religious as well as political grounds, partly because some immigrant activists were Jewish, and partly because an atheist world view imagined that human progress could be achieved without divine intervention or sanction.By the mid-20th century, the global threat of “godless Communism” to U.S. capitalism at home and abroad had discredited U.S. atheism or agnosticism and cemented the associa-tion of atheism with socialism. The Palmer raids on union organizers following the Red Scare of 1919 equated religious with political unorthodoxy, and atheism with socialism, so that earlier proud intellectual traditions of freethought, agnosticism, atheism, and secu-larism were tarred with the brush of bolshevism. All were positioned as potent political heresies that could undermine the powerful Christian-identiied nation-state focused on capitalism and global inance that the U.S. considered itself to be (Kruse, 2015).The McCarthyism of the 1950s, largely a repeat of the Red Scare of 1919, used theolog-ical grounds to purge the godless on behalf of the body politic. It was during the McCar-thy era that the phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance (1954) as an ecumenical religious reference that would differentiate the god-fearing U.S. from the god-less Soviets. A successful 2003 lawsuit brought by an atheist, who argued that the phrase “under God” violated the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment, led to hate mail against the plaintiff and furor in the media (Jacoby, 2004).THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATEMost U.S. citizens assume that freedom of religious expression has deinitively been assured by the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, an assumption that is contradicted by more than a century of Supreme Court constitutional rulings that differentiate between “belief” and “expression” or “practice.” In large measure, the indings are against plaintiffs whose religious practices do not accord with the Court’s hegemonic understandings of Christian practices (Adams, 2012; Echo-Hawk, 2010; Feldman, 1996; Mazur & McCarthy, 2001).The religious protection clauses of the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1791) stipulate that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These clauses were added to provide a mutual assur-ance pact among the Protestant denominations of the 13 colonies that there would be no federally subsidized church supported by public taxes such as they had rebelled against in England (Fraser, 1999; Mazur, 1999). | ADAMS AND JOSHI268The question whether religious freedom was extended only to Protestants across denominations, or to Catholics, Jews and all religions outside Protestantism, has haunted discussions of these religious protection clauses from the outset. On the one hand, the language of the Constitutional religion clauses declined to name the protected religions, relecting the more inclusive language of Jefferson’s 1779 Act for Establishing Religious Freedom for Virginia (1779), “that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities” (quoted in Feldman, 1996, p. 151). But the other side feared that the 1st Amendment became “a door opened for the Jews, Turks, and Hea-thens to enter in publick ofice” and an “invitation for Jews and pagans of every kind to come” to the U.S. (quoted in Feldman, 1996, pp. 162–163). Two centuries later, the Court ruled for the Jeffersonian perspective of religious inclusion:Perhaps in the early days of the republic these words were understood to protect only the diversity within Christianity, but today they are recognized as guaranteeing reli-gious liberty and equality to the inidel, the atheist, or the adherent of non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism. . . . The anti-discrimination principle inherent in the Establishment Clause necessarily means that would-be discriminators on the basis of religion cannot prevail.(County of Allegeny v. American Civil Liberties Union, 1989)The irst of the “religious protection” clauses, the Establishment Clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) prohibits government from estab-lishing or favoring any single religion, religious denomination, or sect. The second reli-gious protection clause, Free Exercise Clause (“Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise thereof”) has been interpreted to refer to religious belief and/or practice, although religious practice claims have been narrowly hedged and in many cases rejected in Supreme Court indings.The well-known phrase “separation of church and state” comes not from the Consti-tution itself but from a letter from Jefferson (1802) to assure a Baptist congregation that the 1st Amendment had built “a wall of separation between Church and State” (Butler, Wacker, & Balmer, 2003, pp. 155–160; Fraser, 1999, pp. 18–21). This “wall of separa-tion” between government and religion is still referred to as “the separation of Church and State,” despite the proliferation of diverse religious places for worship such as Buddhist ashrams, Sikh gurdwaras, Muslim mosques, and Jewish synagogues or temples today.In resolving legal questions brought under these two religious protection clauses, the Supreme Court has rarely used strict separation or a literal “wall of separation.” Instead, most decisions have used accommodation or non-preference to avoid tilting any advantage to one religion over another. Accordingly, the Court found that students might be released from K–12 classes to receive religious instruction outside the school premises, but did not allow taxpayer (public) reimbursement to parochial schools for expenses incurred in teach-ing secular subjects inside the school premises (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971). In reaching these decisions, the Court asked questions such as: What is the secular purpose of any leg-islation in question? Is its primary effect to advance or inhibit religion? Will a legal decision avoid “ ‘excessive government entanglement with religion’ ” (Maddigan, 1993, p. 299)?The free exercise clause has generally been interpreted by the courts to afirm free reli-gious belief, but not to afirm religious practices or behaviors that were in conlict with neutral-seeming legal restrictions. Freedom of religious belief has not been challenged because it is closely linked with freedom of speech (also a 1st Amendment right). But case law dealing with religious worship, practice, behavior, expression, or action have been RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |269balanced against the legal concept of compelling state interests. The Court generally has looked more favorably upon “free exercise” claims brought by Christian-identiied groups, such as Seventh-day Adventists (Sherbert v. Verner, 1963) and Amish (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972).Claiming their “free exercise” rights has proven more daunting for non-Christians. For example, in a free-exercise claim brought by an Orthodox Jew in the military who was required by religion to maintain head-covering at all times, the Court deferred to the mili-tary code. The Court argued that wearing the yarmulke was a personal preference, not a requirement of his religion; and that the standardized uniform needs of the military super-seded his free exercise claims, and that military regulations were reasonable and did not violate the free exercise clause (Goldman v. Weinberger, 1986). By comparison, the Court had no dificulty afirming the “religious requirements” in cases brought by the Amish, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists.Similarly, Native American Indian free exercise claims from 1980 on were unsuccess-ful, and were evaluated by shifting, unfavorable criteria (Feldman, 1996; Long, 2000). The Court found that Cherokee and Navajo plaintiffs were not justiied in claiming “free exercise” relief from federal land policies that prevented their religious practice in sacred sites that had been designated as federal parks or other public uses. In contrast to earlier indings (concerning the Amish or Seventh-day Adventists), the Court did not see that Native peoples, too, practiced ancient recognized religions; and that they, like the Amish, held their beliefs sincerely. The Court ignored the burden on free expression by federal land management policies or indings that the state interests in park policy were negligible and that the parks had not used the least-restrictive means (Beaman, 2003; Echo-Hawk, 2010).If one were to apply a test of consistency to these and other Supreme Court 1st Amend-ment protection of free religious exercise cases, it would seem clear that these non-Christian cases met the criteria afirmed in the case of Amish or Seventh-day Adventist free exercise indings. The major difference appears to be that the cases rejected by the courts were cases in which the free exercise claims were not based upon traditional or (for them) rec-ognizable norms of religious free exercise and worship. For example, it did not occur to the court that standardized uniforms “will almost always mirror the values and practices of the dominant majority—namely Christians. Put bluntly, the U.S. military is unlikely to require everyone to wear a yarmulke as part of the standard uniform” (Feldman, 1996, p. 247). The Court did not consider that in Orthodox Judaism (as in other orthodox reli-gions), head-covering is required at all times. Nor, in the Native peoples’ sacred sites cases, was the Court willing to protect Native peoples’ capacity to conduct traditional religious ceremonies in ancient, well-established, and traditional sacred settings. In the numerous Native cases brought and lost, “free exercise” claims were subordinated to the federal gov-ernment’s authority in controlling what had become federal lands, with no regard for the ways in which such land had been acquired (Linge, 2000, p. 314).At the same time, the Supreme Court upheld the use of politically sanctioned religious speech, ritual, and symbols that had been derived from Christian texts and traditions and used to describe the religious heritage of the U.S., and which they rationalized as a U.S. “civil religion” (Bellah, 1967; Jones & Richey, 1974). For example, the phrase “In God We Trust” was added to the U.S. currency in 1864, and Congress made Christmas a national holiday in 1865 during the crisis of Civil War. The phrase “In God We Trust” uses the Christian norm of naming the deity, an affront to orthodox Jews (who must not write or utter the divine name), to Muslims (who invoke Allah), or to the variously named deities in Hindu or other faith traditions. “In God We Trust” excludes freethinkers, agnostics, and atheists from the hegemonic Christian national identity (“we”) assumed by this phrase. | ADAMS AND JOSHI270Supreme Court decisions between 1890 and 1930 stated that the U.S. “is one of the ‘Christian countries’,” a “Christian nation,” “a Christian people,” although in 1952 the phrasing became more ecumenical: “We are a religious people whose institutions presup-pose a Supreme Being” (Feldman, 1996).RELIGION AND PUBLIC SCHOOLINGReligion has been central to U.S. education, from the colonial period when it was a fam-ily responsibility to educate one’s young, into the 19th century when it became a priority for the state. The “common” (public) schools of the 19th century public education shared Protestant religious texts, prayers, and values as a nationalizing glue for a newly established system of primary schooling. The need for a “public” educational system had become evi-dent following the Civil War, when immigrants as well as U.S.-born settlers migrated into western territories, all needing to ensure literacy and practical education for their children. There was also the perceived need to “Americanize” the children of Irish and German Catholic immigrants at mid-century, and the many other immigrants that followed. To meet these needs, Protestant leaders established a “nondenominational” network of “com-mon schools,” which were racially segregated and whose “common” curriculum forged the values for a shared national identity (Fraser, 1999).The common schools formed the precursor for today’s public school system. The com-mon schools delivered a core curriculum upon which the major Protestant denominations could agree. They could be considered ecumenical or non-denominational only in the sense of bridging sectarian differences within a Protestant framework, although Amish, Mennonites, and Quakers more often maintained their own schools. Catholic immigrant communities established their own parish-based “parochial” school system, designed to maintain Catholic education by using the Douay Bible and Roman Catholic catechism, rather than the King James Bible and Protestant Book of Common Prayer used in the com-mon schools.The emergence of two major educational networks, each with explicit religious afilia-tions, led to political, inancial, legal, and at times violent conlicts between a (largely Prot-estant) Christian population in the public schools and challenges from parochial schools. This conlict only intensiied as the political leverage generated by Jewish, Catholic, and other non-Christian populations increased. Prayer and Bible readings in public schools came under scrutiny in “establishment” 1st Amendment cases of the 1950s and 1960s.Two such cases went to the U.S. Supreme Court and continue to impact the dialogue about religion and public schools today. In Engel v. Vitale (1962), Jewish families in Long Island protested the daily prayer that had been mandated (by state legislation in 1951) to promote religious commitment and moral and spiritual values. The Supreme Court agreed with the plaintiffs that prayer in public schools violated the 1st Amendment’s Estab-lishment Clause. Then, in Abington Township School District v. Schempp, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Bible reading and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in public schools, but commented that study about religions (as distinct from religious study) in the nation’s public schools is both legal and desirable. The justices stated that a student’s education is not complete without instruction concerning religious inluences on history, culture, and literature (Murray, 2008).As the diversity of religions held by U.S. citizens increased, members of faith traditions challenging limits on their free expression turned to the courts to decide Constitutional issues of religion and public schools. These issues ranged from prayer in schools or school events, to the celebration of Christian holidays in public spaces, to curricular decisions concerning evolution or creationism in biology classes, to the appropriate garb (hijab, RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |271kippa) for public school students. School boards and religious communities across the country continue to debate whether public schools should be secular religion-free zones or whether teaching about religion (rather than teaching of religion) should be included in standard public school curricula. In this chapter, we take the position that to truly under-stand our own neighbors and to participate effectively in a diverse citizenry and global society, we will need to do a much better job of understanding each other’s religions, beliefs and traditions of worship, as well as the salience of religion in our different cultures.DEMOGRAPHICS OF CURRENT U.S. RELIGIOUS DIVERSITYThe national census does not provide the demographic information on religion that it offers for ethnic and racial self-identiication. Non-governmental surveys that collect data on religion are often voluntary, based on self-reports from organized religious congrega-tions or afiliations, and thus vary depending on whether religious identity is linked to organized, observant religious communities, or based on survey data and self-report. Since Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Native American religious practices are not neces-sarily congregational or documented by oficial listings, it becomes all the more dificult to gather demographic data on the numbers of adherents. The numbers in Table 8.1 are gathered from composite sources to provide an estimate of religious demographics.The approximate numbers for Buddhists include converts of all races as well as immi-grant irst- and second-generation Americans. Buddhists come primarily from Japan, China, Tibet, Thailand, Cambodia, and other Asian nations. Approximately 75% to 80% of American Buddhists are of Asian ancestry.Most Sikhs are of Indian origin, from Punjab. Islam is a pan-ethnic religion, with adher-ents in the U.S. from East, Southeast, Central, and South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. There are also African American and European American (mainly Albanian) Muslims. Afri-can Americans, Arabs, and South Asians comprise more than three-quarters of all Muslims in the United States. South Asians make up the fastest growing Muslim immigrant popu-lation. Around 60% of native-born U.S. Muslims are African Americans (Pew Research Center, 2011a).Table 8.1 U.S. Religious DemographicsReligionNumbersSourceBuddhist2.2–3.6 millionPew Research Center (Lipka, 2014)Dharma World Magazine (Tanaka, 2011)Christian240–262 millionGallup Poll (Newport, 2012) Pew Research Center(Pew Research Center, 2011b)Hindu2.3–3 millionAssociation of Religion Data Archives (Melton & Jones, 2011)U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (Hinduism Today, 2008)Jewish4.2–6.8 millionPew Research Center (Lipka, 2013)Brandeis University’s Steinhardt Social Research Institute (Tighe, Saxe, Magidin de Kramer, & Parmer, 2013)Muslim1.8–7 millionPew Research Forum (Pew Research Center, 2011a)The American Mosque (Bagby, 2011)Sikh200,000–700,000Sikh American Legal Defense & Education Fund (SALDEF, 2014) | ADAMS AND JOSHI272The overall Christian share of the U.S. population dropped from 78% in 2007 to 70% in 2014, with the loss mainly to mainstream Protestants and Catholics, accompanied by increases in those who claimed to be “unafiliated” or non-Christian (Pew Research Center, 2015, pp. 2–3). Pew also reported increased interreligious marriages, from 19% prior to 1960 to 39% in 2010 (2015, p. 5). Pew further reported that “By a wide margin, religious ‘nones’ have experienced larger gains through religious switching” in the sense that 18% of U.S. adults raised in a religious faith had come to identify with no religion in the Pew sur-vey (2015, p. 11). There were gains in the populations of Catholics and evangelical Prot-estants of color. In broad brushstrokes, however, the U.S. has more Christians than other countries globally—70% people in the U.S. identify with some branch of Christianity.CONTEMPORARY MANIFESTATIONS OF CHRISTIAN HEGEMONYCHRISTIAN NORMATIVITY, HEGEMONY, AND PRIVILEGEMany of the historical legacies noted above persist today in events and acts that, over time, became normalized within U.S. traditions while retaining their Christian associa-tions. There are numerous examples of Christian normativity—contemporary rituals and practices that carry Christian culture into the public sphere yet are accepted as “normal,” such as the lighting of the Christmas tree at the White House or in a local town, commu-nity Easter egg hunts, and the presumptively non-denominational prayer at the start of a city council meeting.These public rituals have a basis in Christianity, and become repackaged as a U.S. “civil religion,” meaning they are supposed to be seen as “American” traditions, widespread and propagated by the popular media (Steinberg & Kincheloe, 2009). This “civil religion” is maintained as a glue for U.S. national identity and an indicator of one’s patriotism. Calling this marker of Christian hegemony a “civil religion” downplays the role of Christianity in the American way of life (Feldman, 1996; Murray, 2008).Many people consider these events to be normal, appropriate, and joyous activities for all Americans. Few people think seriously about the ways in which U.S. Christianity has institutionalized its values and practices while marginalizing and subordinating those who do not adhere to Christian faith traditions. The above scenarios of “normalized” customs operate to privilege Christians while contributing to the marginalization and fur-ther invisibility of non-Christian faiths and atheists and agnostics. Christianity is a visible ingredient of U.S. patriotism in war-time or times of presumed conlict, as during the Cold War of the 1950s—when to be an atheist was to be un-American, and to be a Jew was suspect—or today with the suspicion of anyone thought to be Muslim. This issue emerged again in questions of President Obama’s religious convictions (Protestant or Muslim), even to rumors whether he took the oath of ofice holding a Bible or the Qur’an.Further, Christian norms shape assumptions about where and how to worship: In rec-ognizable religious buildings (churches), but not in geographic sacred sites; and with hands clasped in prayer, but not stretched forward on the loor from a kneeling position. The respect shown to core Christian beliefs (the Virgin birth, the Resurrection, the Second Coming) is not accorded to the religious or spiritual beliefs of indigenous peoples. Moham-med’s midnight light to heaven (Islam) or Vishnu’s periodic visitation of the Earth under different guises (Hinduism) are mocked and laughed at, reduced to the status of “myths” and “folkways.” These views devalue them by removing their religious content through an implicit comparison with Christian beliefs or truths, and with Christian worship and religious observance (Joshi, 2006). RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |273Because Christianity is culturally normative, non-Christians are asked, “What is ‘your Bible’?” and “When is ‘your Christmas’?” The normative force of these questions comes from the assumption that other religions have the same or equivalent versions of one sacred text or one or two major holidays. Hinduism, for example, has more than one sacred text, as does Judaism. Similarly, the respect accorded to U.S. depic-tions of God as a bearded (often fearsome) elderly man—or the Trinity that includes a white-bearded elder, a younger blue-eyed blondish Jesus, and a white dove—is not granted to Ganesh (half-elephant, half-human); or Krishna with his blue skin; or the four-armed Saraswati, goddess of knowledge, wisdom, and learning; or images of the seated Buddha.Christian hegemony conveys the societal power inherent in these cumulative norma-tive markers of Christianity (Kivel, 2013). The patriotism conveyed by “one nation under God” or the usual valedictory of U.S. Presidents, “God bless America,” afirms identiica-tion with a Christian God. Beyond the cultural insult, hegemonic Christianity has real economic consequences for Jews who worship and rest from Friday sundown through Sat-urday; for Muslims who have weekly prayer obligations on Fridays; and for Hindus, Sikhs, and others whose major holidays may not coincide with the seven-day week at all. Across the U.S., historically and today, state laws and local ordinances, including strict regulations against work, shopping, and other activities, have been used to ensure that Sunday would be treated as the “Sabbath” (the day of rest). Even today, for example, retail businesses are closed on Sundays in Bergen County, New Jersey, and Georgia law forbids the Sunday sales of alcohol.Christian hegemony at the institutional level and Christian norms at the cultural and societal level intertwine and result in Christian ideas and practices that are engrained and embedded in U.S. culture, law, and policy. The result is Christian privilege, a circumstance where Christians enjoy advantages that are denied to non-Christians.At the interpersonal and individual level, there are many examples of Christian privilege in everyday life (Killermann, 2012; Schlosser, 2003). Americans who are Christian can:• Easily ind Christmas cards, Easter baskets, or other items and food for holiday observances;• Have a religious symbol (a ish, for example) as a bumper sticker without worrying that their car will be vandalized, or they can wear a religious symbol without being afraid of being attacked;• Travel to any part of the country and know their religion will be accepted and that they will have access to religious spaces to practice their faith;• Fundraise to support congregations of their faith without being investigated as poten-tially threatening or terrorist behavior;• Are likely to have politicians responsible for their governance who share their faith.RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION: DISADVANTAGE, MARGINALIZATION, AND DISCRIMINATIONReligious oppression refers to the cultural marginalization and societal subordination of Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Native American spiritualties, Sikhs, and those who identify as atheists, agnostics, or freethinkers in the U.S. Religious oppression is present as individual biases and prejudices, in institutional policies and practices, and in the cultural norms and societal hegemony of Christianity in the U.S.Many examples of bias, prejudice, and ignorance at the individual level have already been mentioned in the preceding section on Christian normativity, such as a personal sense of exclusion from team-based Christian prayer, or rude rather than respectful questions | ADAMS AND JOSHI274about one’s practices, posed in language framed by the Christian norms (“What is your Bible?” “Where do you go to church?”). Other examples include being expected to speak as a representative of one’s religious group, and dealing with stereotypes such as that Jews are cheap, or that Muslims are violent.Non-Christians, whether adherents of other faith traditions or agnostics and atheists, are subject to the proselytizing encouraged in evangelical Christian practice. Christians who believe they are doing the “right thing” by carrying the “good news” to non-Christians would be shocked to know that such proselytizing can be experienced as bullying and harassment—and that when repeated, build up on a daily basis as microaggressions that cause anxiety and fear. The Butte, Montana, newspaper editor (1870) who wrote “the Chinaman’s life is not our life, his religion is not our religion” (Eck, 2001, p. 166) sounds much the same normative note as the recent proselytizing claim “that all Hindus should open their eyes and ind Jesus” (Haiz & Raghunathan, 2014, p. x).Finally, there is always the fear of personal violence. Many Hindus, Jews, Muslims, or Sikhs feel vulnerable on the basis of both dark-skinned physiognomy and religious attire that mark their outsider religious status, confounded with and multiplied by outsider racial, ethnic, and linguistic status. They and their families have bricks thrown through windows or vicious slurs from passersby. Sikhs who wear turbans are attacked and their turbans forcibly removed; Hindu women wearing a bindi or forehead dot are harassed and insulted. Hate crimes against Jews have increased at synagogues and Jewish day care cen-ters. Individuals angry about Israel’s actions toward Palestinians may target individual Jews who have no connection to and may not even support such policies. As numerous hate crimes studies have shown, such violence is regrettably neither rare nor a phenomenon of the past (Eck, 2001; Pew Research Center passim).At the institutional level of the workplace, individuals whose religious identities are vis-ible may not be considered appropriate for “front desk” or “client service” positions and have been denied employment. In these situations, grooming and dress policies reproduce mainstream cultural norms that clash with the kippa (yarmulke), turban, long hair, and beard that are required of observant Jewish, Sikh, or Muslim men. For example, a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2015 revealed that clothier Abercrombie & Fitch had refused to hire a Muslim girl as one of its sales staff because she wore the traditional Muslim headscarf or hijab. When non-Christian religious groups have attempted to erect a house of worship in some towns and cities across the country, city councils and neighborhood groups have created legal roadblocks, and have in many cases prevented the construction or so poisoned the cultural atmosphere that religious minorities chose to go elsewhere (Eck, 2001; Esposito & Kalin, 2011; Singh, 2003).The cultural devaluation by which religious beliefs of Hindus, Muslims and Native peoples have been represented as “myths” and “legends” is also expressed at the institu-tional level of the marketplace, where popular dress fads commodify and trivialize markers of marginalized or exoticized religion. Sales in gift shops of Native dream catchers, which is distinct from Native artists who reproduce Hopi spiritual items and whose proceeds support Native artists and communities, are one example of religious misappropriation. Another is the popularity of Hindu god and goddess images on candles, perfume, and clothing with secular purposes. On the mass-production market, these multi-armed gods and goddesses become cultish and fetishized, portrayed as cartoonish, despite their reli-gious seriousness to believers as visible manifestations of the divine.The overarching vision of social justice is one in which the current “privileges” held by Christians in the U.S. become considered “rights” that are protected for everyone, regard-less of religion or non-religion. For this to take place, U.S. Christians will need to became far more aware of their privilege and of the cumulative and powerful normative inluence RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |275of Christianity in everyday life, if they are to “level the living ield” for their non-Christian colleagues, neighbors, and classmates.CONTEMPORARY RACIALIZATION OF RELIGIONAs noted in the earlier section on historical legacies, race had been “co-constitutive” with religion for the Jews, Arabs, and Asian immigrants from 1870–1924, and remains an important contemporary issue requiring special attention. Particularly since 9/11, brown-skinned, bearded Arab Americans and South Asian Americans, as well as Latinos and biracial, multiracial people, are assumed to be Muslim on the basis of their racial appearance, which is presumed to verify their religious identities. This is a period dur-ing which Muslims are among the most demonized members of U.S. society as a result of international events and domestic actions by those who commit violence abroad or in the U.S. in the name of Islam.The notion of the “Muslim terrorist,” powerfully etched in the minds of many Ameri-cans, is still in place. That this stereotype is the irst assumption of the press and the police when violence occurs was demonstrated at the time of the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building (carried out by a white right-wing extremist). We neglect the evidence on the other side—that threats and arson against medical clinics that provide abortion services, the murders of Jews, and the execution-style massacre of black worshippers at a South Carolina prayer service—all were conducted by white Christian ideological extrem-ists who were not, however, described as “Christian terrorists” (Singh, 2013). Instead, the fanaticism and violence committed by these extremists were attributed to unique psycho-logical or ideological factors. Indeed, “Muslim” or “Islamic” and “terrorists” seem a single, hyphenated term in media coverage, which emphasizes the threats posed by dark-skinned, bearded Muslims (Alsultany, 2008; Rana, 2011).Islamophobia in the U.S. is not just a post 9/11 phenomenon, as noted in the earlier sec-tion on historical legacies. But there has been clear acceleration in the religious and racial stereotyping of Muslims—a “phobia” toward adherents of Islam (Islamophobia)—as if all were violent extremists. These assumptions have been reinforced in response to the oil crisis of 1973, the Gulf Wars of the 1980s and 1990s, the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the bombings in London and Madrid. Most recently, the stereotyping in the media builds on stories of Western-born young Muslims joining ISIS, and also accelerates fears of a geopolitical threat brought back to Europe and the U.S. by ISIS-trained jihadists.Media representations designed to meet a 24/7 news cycle or focus on monitoring U.S. borders essentialize Muslims as if all were intrinsically violent, destructive, and incapable of self-regulation or democracy, whether on the basis of theology or genetics (Esposito & Kalin, 2011; Jamal & Naber, 2008). Remarks from political leaders and the news media reinforce caricatures that are ilmmakers’ or cartoonists’ stock-in-trade (Alsultany, 2008; Shaheen, 2001). These negative images echo the antisemitic cartoons at the height of anti-semitism in pre-World War II Europe and the U.S.The widespread use of the term “Muslim terrorist” not only perpetuates fallacious and harmful stereotypes. It erases the complexity of religious traditions that are encapsulated within Islam, a religion as complex and multifaceted as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Judaism. All (like Islam) contain a wide spectrum of beliefs that range from literal ultra-orthodoxy at one end (at times, marked by fanaticism) to progressive liberalism at the other (at times verging on secularism). In a variation of the ironic tag that refers to the racial proiling of African Americans, Singh (2103) notes the new racial designation “apparently Muslim” to capture the daily experience of Arab Americans when traveling, dealing with police, applying for jobs, and receiving poor service in restaurants. | ADAMS AND JOSHI276GLOBAL RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL VIOLENCEWhile the focus of this chapter is on religious oppression in the U.S., the dynamics we describe occur globally. Most nation-states have one dominant religion that is hegemonic and that shapes national identity, thereby marginalizing or subordinating religious minori-ties in ways that intersect with class or caste, race, and ethnicity.Some countries, such as Australia, Canada, France, India, South Africa, and the U.S., have religious protections built into their Constitutions. Others maintain formal religious establishments as part of the political framework, such as Great Britain’s Anglican Church, or Islam as an oficial state religion in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, or Judaism within Israel. These countries share with other democracies the dilemma of protecting the human rights of all peoples, in this case of religious minorities, despite political decisions driven by majoritarian electoral politics.Many nation-states have experienced violent upheavals that relect religious hegemony and marginalization, such as the Hindu/Muslim conlicts in India and Muslim/Christian violence in Pakistan. Religious claims are further complicated by ethnicity, class, or caste; historical and geographic competition for national identity; and resources (as in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia; or Israel and Palestine) (Armstrong, 2014; Fox, 2000, 2002). The conlicts in Northern Ireland and Israel relect historical and contemporary inequities and grievances based on political and economic privileges/disadvantages that greatly compli-cate religious struggles for national identity. It is hard to grasp the complexity of global or local religious conlicts without accounting for decades, sometimes centuries, of religious, ethnic, and economic struggle, intensiied and justiied by competing historical narratives and claims for land, food, and water between dominating and subordinated peoples (Arm-strong, 2014; Fox, 2000, 2002; Juergensmeyer, 2000, 2004; Said 1978, 1993).The global and local have converged in the U.S., especially on college campuses, in ideological positions taken or assumed to have been taken by students on different sides of the seemingly intractable conlict between Israel and Palestine. This conlict is sometimes generalized as a conlict speciically between Jews and Muslims, a view that oversimpliies the complexities in the Middle East of competing nationalisms and territorial claims vin-dicated by conlicting histories, as well as different ideological disagreements within Islam and Judaism.This conlict has come to U.S. college campuses by divestment efforts and the erroneous view that thoughtful critiques of Israeli policies and nationalism are necessarily antisemitic. This conlict seriously impacts the relations between Jews and Muslims in the U.S., what-ever their convictions about the politics of the Middle East (Shavit, 2013; Tolan, 2006), and they play out in complex and challenging ways that negatively affect campus Jews (Kosmin & Keysar, 2015) and campus Muslims (Berlak, 2014). One dimension is the role of oversimpliication, by which all Jews are faulted for Israeli settlement expansions and military policies, so that U.S. Jews (who largely are white) are also held responsible for the racism that is a component of the Israeli-Palestinian conlict. It is not often noted that many Israeli Jews are also peoples of color, refugees from North African and Arab countries. On the other end, Muslims are faulted and feared as if all were adherents of radical Islam.These ideological conlicts leave no space for Jews who critique Israeli politics, but who also need to identify as Jewish (Karpf, Klug, Rose, & Rosenbaum, 2008; Kushner & Solomon, 2003)—or for Muslims who oppose radical Islam but who also (sometimes vis-ibly) identify as Muslim. The Trinity College Anti-Semitism Report (February 2015) found alarmingly high reports by Jewish students of antisemitic incidents experienced or observed on their campuses, mainly one-on-one, sometimes in groups or classrooms, but generally RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |277ignored or downplayed by campus administrations (Kosmin & Keysar, 2015, pp. 10–12). The Political Research Associates report on antisemitism and Islamophobia on U.S. col-lege campuses offers detailed analysis of the dilemmas facing observant as well as secular Jews and Muslims, with interviews and campus scenarios detailing the speciics of campus conlicts and controversies (Berlak, 2014). The essentializing inherent to antisemitism and Islamophobia disrupts efforts to build bridges and coalitions within educational settings, at a time when young people may be most open to cross-religious friendships, collaboration, and interfaith activism.INTERSECTIONS OF RELIGIOUS HEGEMONY AND OPPRESSION WITH OTHER ISMSWhile we particularly highlight the intersection of region and race, Christian hegemony and religious oppression intersect with other social identities and forms of oppression as well. Two Supreme Court split decisions in 2014 and 2015, relecting the opposite sides of the Court, placed religious-freedom claims in direct opposition to women’s rights to choose and gay couples’ rights to marry. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), a narrow con-servative majority found that family-owned companies could be exempted from providing for insurance under the Affordable Care Act for contraception on the basis of their reli-gious opposition to contraception. The Court’s inding was based on a new interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA, 1993), which had been originally crafted by Congress to protect marginalized religions, such as those of Native peoples. This new reasoning on RFRA would protect the religious exercise of individuals and for-proit com-panies whose religious convictions opposed the rights of marginalized groups—of women for contraception, and a year later, same-sex marriage.In 2015, a liberal narrow majority in the Court found marriage equality to be a Con-stitutionally protected right. In nearly simultaneous protest, state legislatures passed local versions of RFRA protecting commercial enterprises (lorists, bakeries) whose owners opposed marriage equality on religious grounds, and who denied services to gay couples. Civil rights groups immediately responded by stating that the denial of service by businesses to legally protected minorities is the very deinition of discrimination. The resulting politi-cal irestorm over “religious protection” legislation in opposition to anti-discrimination laws protecting subordinated groups on the basis of gender and sexuality shows no sign of abating and is likely to be a hotly contested issue in the future (Cole, 2015; Eckholm, 2015).Many global issues may wear a religious veneer, but below the surface one inds long-simmering conlicts among social classes, racial or ethnic groups, and the suppression of women’s rights to their bodies and to education. Conlicts that have been framed as reli-gious (in the Middle East, India, Pakistan, and Ireland) require closer analysis of economic inequality (land, jobs, education), sexual abuse and subordination, violence toward sexual and gender nonconformity, and competing nationalisms that have been subsumed by the religious dimensions that seem most visible (Little, 2007). Similarly, the sexual victimiza-tion of women in Africa, China, India, and Pakistan, or efforts to prevent their education (as in Afghanistan), may relect ethnic authoritarian enforcement of religious patriarchy within families, reinforced by police or other authorities.This intersectional approach to religious oppression explores the “co-constitutive relationships” (Goldschmidt & McAlister, 2004, p. 6) between religion and other social categories—race, ethnicity, economic class, gender, and sexuality—to which we must add | ADAMS AND JOSHI278nationalism. The intersection of religion with nationalism accounts for many of the most vicious attacks on members of “outsider” religious groups historically (such as pogroms against Jews in Russia) and currently (such as attacks on Sikhs in the U.S. and Chris-tians in Pakistan). In such cases, it is extraordinarily dificult to try to hold in place one strand—religion—while also understanding that it is not truly a single strand but involves a “simultaneity of systems.” Solo issues we call race and/or ethnicity and/or culture and/or class and caste and/or religion are interactive rather than unitary, “constructed in and through each other, and through other categories of difference” (Goldschmidt & McAli-ster, 2004, p. 7).Adding religion as yet another category of analysis within systems of domination and oppression makes for a slippery slope if one attempts merely to isolate or freeze religious justiications from a complex web that includes cultural, ethnic, racial, class or gender-based rationales for oppression. The primary reason for attempting this disentanglement through a focus on speciic isms—in this case, religion— is to better understand the previ-ously under-examined religious justiications used in tandem with racism or classism to dehumanize the “Other,” dismiss minority religions, relocate or restrict their living spaces, and eradicate their cultures. “Land acquisition and missionary work always went hand in hand in American history” (Deloria, 1969/1999, p. 22).MOVING TOWARD JUSTICEAlthough there have been Baha’is, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, and practitioners of Santería, Shinto, Native American spiritualties, and other world religions in the U.S. for decades, and in some cases for centuries, never have there been so many burgeoning religious-oriented communities and organized houses of worship as there are today. Just as the arrival of Catholic and Jewish immigrants spurred public debate on reli-gion and schooling in the 19th and early 20th centuries, so today new waves of immigrants are creating new points of discussion and conlict in these areas. Along with the increase in faith traditions that are not Christian, we also see a rise in the number of people who think of themselves as non-afiliated, agnostic, atheist, or “nothing in particular” (Pew Research Center, 2015). Agnostics and atheists have become more outspoken and openly challenge the beliefs and traditions of formal religion (Andrews, 2013; Christina, 2012; Hitchens, 2007). Promoting religious pluralism needs to provide space for non-believers who may identify in various ways—as agnostic, atheist, non-believer, rationalist, secular humanist, or “nothing in particular.”One way for our society to be more inclusive is to not use religion as a rationale or excuse for discrimination against social identity groups that may seem outsider to one’s own faith tradition. For example, individual religious beliefs have been used to perpetuate homophobia. The renewed attention on the free exercise of religion demonstrates the need for greater clarity and understanding about what can and cannot be done to express or suppress religion in the public arena, as in the case of Christmas nativity scenes on public property, sectarian prayer before public meetings, and denial of public services on the basis of religious objections to gays and lesbians. During the Christmas season, some public oficials incorporate celebrations of Chanukah and Kwanzaa. In the case of Christian nor-mative public celebrations, public oficials need to consider how to be authentically inclu-sive and pluralistic as distinct from “additive.” This includes questioning the hegemonic assumption that authorities should invoke a speciic deity for guidance in public matters. While oficials might look for guidance in their private moments, it can be argued that a RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |279public meeting should not presume agreement among participants as to the nature or the role of divine guidance.The interfaith arena offers many opportunities for mutual understanding and respect, if not agreement, including but not limited to inter-religious dialogue (Forward, 2001; McCarthy, 2007; Patel, 2012; Smock, 2002). Interfaith councils have in recent decades included representatives of many religious traditions. Some interfaith groups focus on learn-ing and understanding through dialogue; others address common social concerns; still others revolve around campus environments or public spaces, such as hospitals or prisons (McCar-thy, 2007; Patel & Scorer, 2012). Despite their different approaches, interfaith groups share the unifying belief in intentional relationship-building to resolve intergroup conlict.Interfaith groups have provided support to speciic religious communities in times of crisis, as in the case of members of Jewish communities who were victims of white suprema-cist hate crimes in Billings, Montana (NIOT, 1995/1996). In the aftermath of 9/11, Church members reached out to local Muslim organizations and mosques to ensure their fellow neighbors could pray peacefully and without fear of violence. Protestant ministers came together in 2002 in New Jersey to advance dialogues among different religious communi-ties (Niebuhr, 2008). After the massacre at the Oak Creek Gurdwara in Wisconsin, Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike made their way to gurdwaras in record numbers to show their support, while the Sikh community emphasized that their doors had been and would continue to be open. Interfaith efforts continue to focus on opportunities for members of each group to learn more about the others by meeting in different houses of worship and sharing meals to create bonds and communities.Beyond interfaith coalitions, the vigorous theological as well as moral and pragmatic demands for economic justice by Pope Francis have reached a broad and enthusiastic public, with considerable media attention. Pope Francis’s public apology for the partici-pation of the Roman Catholic Church in colonial-era violence against indigenous peo-ples throughout the Americas offered a dramatic instance of the Church’s willingness to acknowledge its share of responsibility for the horrors of Spanish colonialism. Pope Francis places responsibility on the inequities of capitalism for global poverty and economic injus-tice, with a critique that goes well beyond traditional Catholic social teachings and recalls the efforts of Liberation Theology, whose spirit this Pope now embraces.As we hope for a future that includes religious justice, we must look not only to our religious and secular social movements, but also look for clarity about the role of religion in the public education curriculum. Educators have come to understand that moderniza-tion calls for pluralism, not secularization among its “diversity” concerns (Patel, 2015), although secularists or non-aligned non-believers must also be included in such religious pluralism.Teaching about religion in public education has been hampered because of anxiety and misunderstanding about the applicability of the religion clauses of the 1st Amendment to public schooling. The Constitutional prohibition against devotional reading or sectarian prayer in schools has frightened policy-makers into choosing “non-religious” secularism over religious pluralism in efforts to maintain “total separation” between religion and pub-lic education. This approach misrepresents the Constitutional mandate, which does not require that public schools provide a “religion-free zone.” The Supreme Court has encour-aged that religion be made part of the school curriculum so long as the distinction between “teaching” and “preaching” is respected. The Court has made clear that schools may, and should, promote awareness of religion and expose students of all ages to the diversity of religious world views, but may not endorse or denigrate any particular religion or belief.The Court on several occasions argued that the 1st Amendment calls for political neutrality, but not exclusion, with regard to religion, by describing the Constitutional | ADAMS AND JOSHI280requirement for “the state to be neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and non-believers . . . State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them” (Everson v. Board of Education, 1947). In a subsequent decision (Abington v. Schempp, 1963), the Court suggested a path forward, namely, a renewed commitment to teaching about religion and religious traditions (not the teaching of any one speciic reli-gion) as part of the regular curriculum. Writing with the majority, Justice Tom Clark said:It might well be said that one’s education is not complete without a study of com-parative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historical qualities. Nothing we have said here indicated that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.(Abington v. Schempp, 1963)Understanding religious differences and the role of religion in the contemporary world—and in our students’ lives—is important to personal growth and development, exposes religious prejudice, and helps build classroom communities where students develop the trust, knowledge, and skills to become thoughtful global citizens. Educators have pre-pared excellent guides to support these efforts in K–12 schooling as well as in higher educa-tion (Anderson, 2007; Haynes, Chaltain, Ferguson, Hudson, & Thomas, 2003; Haynes & Thomas, 2001; Jones & Shefield, 2009; Moore, 2007; Murray, 2008; Nash, 2001).There are many settings, classrooms, community groups, and religious organizations where members of different religious communities—and those who do not identify with any religion—can further explore the Christian hegemony and religious discrimination that characterizes our historical past and present, and consider how to foster religious pluralism and social justice in their future. We aim for something greater than merely to reduce religious discrimination against non-Christians, although that is surely an impor-tant intermediary step. Our aim is a genuinely pluralistic society that is socially just and in which religious communities, as well as non-believers, are visible, but without privileges accorded to some and disadvantages experienced by others. As we imagine ways of moving from “here” to “there,” we focus upon how to challenge Christian hegemony in the public square and in educational settings, so that, in the words of an earlier Supreme Court, “The anti-discrimination principle inherent in the Establishment Clause necessarily means that would-be discriminators on the basis of religion cannot prevail” (County of Allegeny v. American Civil Liberties Union, 1989).SAMPLE DESIGN FOR TEACHING ABOUT CHRISTIAN HEGEMONY AND RELIGIOUS OPPRESSIONThe following design uses a social justice approach to Christian hegemony and religious oppression, drawing upon themes and information presented in this chapter. This is not an instructional design to teach “about” religion, nor does it focus on the differences among religions. It focuses on historical and contemporary manifestations of religious oppression as it plays out in the U.S. through pervasive Christian hegemony.This design, like other designs in this volume, uses four quadrants to suggest ways to “sequence” the learning outcomes for students. These quadrants generall

| ADAMS AND JOSHI280requirement for “the state to be neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and non-believers . . . State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them” (Everson v. Board of Education, 1947). In a subsequent decision (Abington v. Schempp, 1963), the Court suggested a path forward, namely, a renewed commitment to teaching about religion and religious traditions (not the teaching of any one speciic reli-gion) as part of the regular curriculum. Writing with the majority, Justice Tom Clark said:It might well be said that one’s education is not complete without a study of com-parative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historical qualities. Nothing we have said here indicated that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.(Abington v. Schempp, 1963)Understanding religious differences and the role of religion in the contemporary world—and in our students’ lives—is important to personal growth and development, exposes religious prejudice, and helps build classroom communities where students develop the trust, knowledge, and skills to become thoughtful global citizens. Educators have pre-pared excellent guides to support these efforts in K–12 schooling as well as in higher educa-tion (Anderson, 2007; Haynes, Chaltain, Ferguson, Hudson, & Thomas, 2003; Haynes & Thomas, 2001; Jones & Shefield, 2009; Moore, 2007; Murray, 2008; Nash, 2001).There are many settings, classrooms, community groups, and religious organizations where members of different religious communities—and those who do not identify with any religion—can further explore the Christian hegemony and religious discrimination that characterizes our historical past and present, and consider how to foster religious pluralism and social justice in their future. We aim for something greater than merely to reduce religious discrimination against non-Christians, although that is surely an impor-tant intermediary step. Our aim is a genuinely pluralistic society that is socially just and in which religious communities, as well as non-believers, are visible, but without privileges accorded to some and disadvantages experienced by others. As we imagine ways of moving from “here” to “there,” we focus upon how to challenge Christian hegemony in the public square and in educational settings, so that, in the words of an earlier Supreme Court, “The anti-discrimination principle inherent in the Establishment Clause necessarily means that would-be discriminators on the basis of religion cannot prevail” (County of Allegeny v. American Civil Liberties Union, 1989).SAMPLE DESIGN FOR TEACHING ABOUT CHRISTIAN HEGEMONY AND RELIGIOUS OPPRESSIONThe following design uses a social justice approach to Christian hegemony and religious oppression, drawing upon themes and information presented in this chapter. This is not an instructional design to teach “about” religion, nor does it focus on the differences among religions. It focuses on historical and contemporary manifestations of religious oppression as it plays out in the U.S. through pervasive Christian hegemony.This design, like other designs in this volume, uses four quadrants to suggest ways to “sequence” the learning outcomes for students. These quadrants generally follow the sequence “What? So what? Now what?” by which we mean: “What is this issue all about?”(overview and personal awareness), “What do we need to know to understand this issue?” (conceptual frameworks, historical legacies, contemporary manifestations, inter-sections with other issues), and “Now that we know and care about this issue, what do we feel comfortable and have the knowledge and skills to do about it?” (advocacy, coalition building, action planning).We use the four-quadrant design because it helps us keep this learning sequence in focus. It can easily be adapted to other modalities, such as short workshops or semester-long courses. Examples of other modalities appear on the chapter website.The sample design for Religious Oppression offered below is immediately followed by learning objectives and core concepts speciic to each of the four quadrants, as well as brief descriptors of the activities needed to carry out the design. Actual instructions and facilita-tion notes for each of these activities can be found on the Religious Oppression website that accompanies this volume (p. 281).This design presupposes familiarity with the core social justice concepts that we con-sider foundational to any social justice approach (presented in Chapter 4). We incorporate these core concepts in ways that we believe “it” an exploration of religious oppression. We assume that instructors and facilitators will have read Chapter 4 and will have considered these core concepts more fully prior to applying them to Religious Oppression.Following the four-quadrant design, learning outcomes, core concepts, and activities, the chapter closes with general discussion of pedagogical, design, and facilitation issues that we have found to be speciic to teaching about religious oppression. Speciic consid-erations of pedagogy, design, and facilitation for each of the activities are explained more fully on the website, immediately following the description of each activity.